Re: Convert string to variable name?

[mlepage@...]

Hi.  I think what you might want is for your table to store references to your variables, rather than names of the variables.

Sent from my new BlackBerry Z10

From: iain morland

Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 6:51 PM

To: lua-l@lists.lua.org

Reply To: Lua mailing list

Subject: Convert string to variable name?

Hi all,

I've created a table that contains a series of sequentially numbered
variables. I'd like to retrieve those variable names from the table, in
order to set an attribute that exists for those variables in the
implementation of Lua that I'm using (5.1 with custom extensions in MOTU
MachFive), but I'm having problems because Lua seems to interpret the names
as strings, rather than as variables. I'm sure the fault is my lack of
understanding, rather than a problem in Lua. :-s

So for example, here's my table of variables:
---
MyTable={}
for i = 0,9 do
MyTable[i]="Variable"..i
end
---
Later on, to set the attribute, I could do this for each variable (0-9):
Variable0.attribute=value
Variable1.attribute=value
..and so on (both attribute and value are the same in each case).

Instead of writing a line for each variable, I'd like to use the contents of
the table, like so:
---
for i=0,9 do
print(MyTable[i]) --this works fine
MyTable[i].attribute=value --this doesn't work ("attempt to
index a string value").
end
---
So how could I get the string that's returned by MyTable[i] to be "seen" by
Lua as a variable name?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Regards,
Iain